Beta 3 Status

posted on December 8th, 2003, 8:26 am

the Beta 3's current status of development?

posted on December 8th, 2003, 2:02 pm

In progress, and likely to remain that way.

[DOCa Cola]

posted on December 8th, 2003, 4:03 pm

Last edited by DOCa Cola on December 8th, 2003, 4:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

right and it won't stop
for information regarding beta 3 just check out the news on the frontpage from time to time or keep reading the forums as we may accidently reveal information

I will define Beta 3 for you: Beta 3 is a level of progress we made we think it is worth enough over an Beta 2 to make public. it is like an image of our progress we made towards the final version of fleetops. so, when our current development version reaches a state where it is playable we release it after mostly one week or two just for testing (and then to notice that i forgot to include a file in the beta version - hotfix! quick!) and then continue to develop fleetops further according to our development plan we made before we really started to end our little moddings on armada 2 and start a project under the name of "Fleet Operations" (the armada mod you may heard of in april this year). also releasing betas has another important meaning to us, we want you to work with us by sending in your ideas and materials (like maps, voice sets etc) so that fleetops is not only idea that is strict made by our ideas but also by the people who play it. that's also a reason the forum here is so important to us, that you can give us your ideas to discuss about and let them influence the fleetops development in a positive way. the participation on the fleetops project was never expected that high to me. since the beta 1.0 release i got many emails for helping us on the project about hosting the site, new maps, sounds, extensive ideas on gameplay, voice actors, intro videos, music and many many more.. and now, i just want to say thank you for our community which you build up and your help to make fleetops better! Thank you!

Oh, wait i fade away, i just wanted so say, FleetOps is not only developed by us but also by you, with many of your good ideas i read on the forum and email you change the development way so now we can forget the plan we made back at the beginning of this year. so now you may understand why it is hard to say how long it will take to make a beta version ready, we just don't want you as testers for mod but you should also have fun with it. shouldn't you?

DOCa Cola

posted on December 8th, 2003, 8:56 pm

Yeah... what he said.

posted on December 9th, 2003, 3:12 am

Thankyou. As to what i meant was that do you have a finalised form of what you are bringing into the game and what ships and stations as such, maybe special map objects. Also what new features may have been already added to the mod.

posted on December 9th, 2003, 3:24 am

its on the site...

and its only a beta like nothing is realy *final*, since realy there could always be chnages made...

There are some things that will 4 shure be in beta 3 from what weve been told and beta 3 wont come out till they work, if im understanding what doca said...

PS: look where the change log is for the info...

posted on December 11th, 2003, 6:49 am

But there is no Change Log for Beta 3, as to state what will be a few features of the Beta.

posted on December 11th, 2003, 5:21 pm

there are many topics on the site you just have to look eg:
1) avatras
2)non player races
3) extra map objects
ect you just have to look at the topics and you will see.

posted on December 17th, 2003, 6:37 pm

And many Federation textures must be darker!

Examples

posted on January 10th, 2004, 4:55 pm

ugg, feddy ships need more contrast.

posted on January 10th, 2004, 9:25 pm

I don't know about all these beta releases. Doca. perhaps its time to concentrate on a "final" release and then updates for that release. The thing is, theres most likely a lot more people who aren't willing to download v1.0 (98.71mb) then have to download v2.0 (94.09mb). IMO its a lot more unfair to have to expect people who have slower connections to have to download a complete replacement file which already contains a great deal of the content of the previous release.

Also, Doca, and this is no baring on your testing phase, but I've noticed each beta ends up needing at least 2 patches, and this is just the beta release. Perhaps you may want to consider additional testing before sending out your releases. It also seems your "hot" fixes aren't as hot considering the small fact that they still need an additional patch. Oh and before you say something along the lines of "You don't need v1.0 for v2.0 to run", what of those who already downloaded v1.0 and v1.1??

If your planning on future releases perhaps its time to think more of the players. If this was a private mod for just a few then I can understand the way this is being released, but when the public players become involved its more necessary to cater to their needs.

Finally if you've overbalanced the other races in favour of making the borg the weakest race then theres something wrong, and the mod will be overly non-canon with regards to a canon race, which even you should admit is wrong.

posted on January 10th, 2004, 9:58 pm

Ehem, the Borg are not weak or unbalanced. you just can't play with them like with every other race.. you can't with most Fleet Operations races. The Balacing system is well calculated with an excel document. I checked the Borg again and i still don't think they are to weak. I'm a big Borg fan so i won't make them loosy. As said in another topic i will check the borg for beta3 again and again and again there already is a new balancing system in beta3.. it's all beta! there is always space for corrections.

Well about the hotfixes. We are not doing this for money to give service for our customers like for example activision does. we don't have the money, time and people to test everything 3 month before the release. We just have 2 weeks to make a few testgames and sometimes we forget to test something and therefore we need a hotfix. hotfix means it fixes a very explicit bug, it does not say it fixes all know bugs.

we will have to continue to make up complete betas cause we can't upgrade beta2 to beta3 cause nearly everything changes. That's with all coing betas.
The betas are necessary cause we won't release a whole new playbale species in a patch. And i think the Flops fans won't like to wait for one year to have a final version we like to have feedback after each beta to adjust the mod for the needs of the community.

Greetings,
Optec

[DOCa Cola]

posted on January 10th, 2004, 10:09 pm

Last edited by DOCa Cola on January 10th, 2004, 10:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

And many Federation textures must be darker! 

Examples

http://www.puder.org/pics/enterprise.jpg

http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~djc/startrek/p...nterprise-E.gif

http://www.scifinuts.com/images/entmenu.gif

A) how the hell did you get 3 pictures?
ENTERPRISE SUCKS GAINT EGGS, it affends me eyes alomost as badly as seening aduc!

[DOCa Cola]

posted on January 10th, 2004, 10:18 pm

Last edited by DOCa Cola on January 10th, 2004, 10:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't know about all these beta releases. Doca. perhaps its time to concentrate on a "final" release and then updates for that release. The thing is, theres most likely a lot more people who aren't willing to download v1.0 (98.71mb) then have to download v2.0 (94.09mb). IMO its a lot more unfair to have to expect people who have slower connections to have to download a complete replacement file which already contains a great deal of the content of the previous release.

actually the 2.0 release included a lot of changed textures, also the sounds in beta 2 are now mp3 compressed before and a lot were changed mainly cause the most were unoptimized in beta 1.1 so that some sounds were more then 1 mb big what causes big speed deficits.
short before the release of beta 2 i announced an upgrade package for beta 1.1 users.
No Beta 1.1 -> Beta 2.0 Update Pack i hope that explains the upgrade thing.
the thing that there was no 1.0 -> 1.1 upgrade was my fault mainly because i adressed the files extracted from the armada cd only for the 1.0 version of the cd rom (which i later knew there was also a 1.1 version) so that the install would have only worked if you have an old version. an upgrade would have lead to incompatibilities for network/online gaming which was important for us to avoid due to we planned fleetops as a multiplayer mod.
sure, optec is right when he says we do that for free, but of course we want of course a mod that is easy to use and gives no problems. the patches are necessary for important bugs we or the users discover after the release and we haven't seen in our test games. the bugs solved with the patches even weren't discovered by us but from an other user, so there is nothing we can do about that with releasing patches. i don't want to disgruntle people with releasing a new version, it's an opportunity to download, test and give feedback and own ideas for it or wait for the final release. when update versions are possible i will do them but in 1.x were just too many things we haven't done wrong with the files cause we didn't have much experience with releasing mods to public.
Thx for your opinion/suggestion MaP but i can't undo the things we did before the first release of FleetOps beta 1.

DOCa Cola

posted on January 10th, 2004, 10:25 pm

A) how the hell did you get 3 pictures?
ENTERPRISE SUCKS GAINT EGGS, it affends me eyes alomost as badly as seening aduc!

he simpy linked them extarnal to another server, that possible with the IMG button when you are posting